The Rebel Evangelical - Russell Moore

Is A Rare Ant-Trump Voice In The Southern Baptist Community, Here's What He's Been Thinking.

- Nina Burleigh

WHITE EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANS have proven to be President Trump’s most reliable base of support. But not all of their leaders are on board. Russell D. Moore, a pastor and author—and the president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, the public policy arm of the more than 15 million-member Southern Baptist Convention—refused to support Trump in 2016. “Trump’s vitriolic—and often racist and sexist—language about immigrants, women, the disabled and others ought to concern anyone who believes that all persons, not just the ‘winners’ of the moment, are created in God’s image,” he wrote in the National Review that year. His vocal opposition won him a Trump Tweet, in which the soon-to-be President called him “a nasty guy with no heart.”

Moore, 47, has made amends with fellow Southern Baptists who support the President, but he remains a rare anti-Trump voice in evangelical Christian leadership. A prolific author and speaker born and raised in Biloxi, Mississippi, he has continued to call out racism, which he calls “Satanism.” He pushed through a resolution on the floor of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) in 2017, condemning white nationalism and he has said the Confederate flag “cannot coexist” with the Christian cross. Prior to entering the ministry, Moore was an aide to Democratic U.S. Representative Gene Taylor of Mississippi. On July 23, he talked to Newsweek about issues ranging from America as a Christian nation and racism and hate speech—before Trump’s latest salvo at the city of Baltimore and its citizens—to evangelicals as a political force. Here are some edited excerpts:

Q. You’ve stepped away from your summer writing project to talk to us. What are you working on right now?